US-based corporate telephony player, Avaya Inc is in news for its bid to acquire Nortel?s enterprise business unit.

Jangoo Dalal, managing director, Avaya India, however, is busy nurturing its listed subsidiary Avaya Global Connect Limited (AGCL). His main responsibility is Avaya Inc?s two global development centres at Pune and Hyderabad besides performing his role as an overall business head in the country. In an interview with Viveat Susan Pinto, Dalal highlights the changing enterprise communications arena and the roadmap for the company. Excerpts:

Since channel partners are important for your business, how do you plan to strengthen the network in India?

We are working on it. We do have an existing infrastructure in place thanks to the work we have been doing here through AGCL, which was our sole route-to-market in India for the last few years. But we need to grow it. I have come with the mandate to develop our channel partner ecosystem. This will include global system integrators and solution providers, domestic system integrators and solution providers and value-added resellers. The latter will target the small and medium businesses while the other two will target the larger enterprises. This way we intend covering the entire spectrum of businesses.

How has Avaya India?s canvas changed since you took over in June?

I have been putting my team in place here. I have multiple responsibilities. Besides the task of managing Avaya?s global development centres at Pune and Hyderabad, I will also steer sales, marketing and distribution for Avaya in India. AGCL is a system integrator and that company provides solutions and services around Avaya?s technologies. Avaya India?s canvas is slightly larger because it will look into the development of both software and hardware solutions and services as part of its management of the two global development centres apart from sales, marketing and distribution. AGCL is a channel partner for us. It will partner with us, take our software and hardware solutions and services, layer it with theirs and sell it to prospective buyers.

How strong are your service lines?unified communications and contact centres (CC)?in India?

Unified communications (UC) enjoyed a market share of 30.4% in the calendar year 2008, while contact centres had a market share of 27.8% in the same period. Both service lines are equally important to us. Of course, the advantage that we have in the domain of contact centres is that India is a large outsourcing hub and every business here needs a contact centre if they wish to connect with their stakeholders including consumers effectively. The same goes for unified communications too. It is basically the convergence of voice, data and video on a common platform, which is made available ubiquitously to users. There is scope for growth in this space. It is a key thrust area for us.

The UC landscape seems to be changing fast?

We have a UC interface called Avaya Aura that allows users to stay invested in their legacy systems even as they move to new, heterogeneous systems. This has a major advantage: you do not have to unplug your legacy systems to put your new infrastructure in place. This way, your cost of ownership works out to be lower than what competitors would offer you.

I find chief technology officers very excited with this concept, it saves them the trouble of having to unplug their current systems and they can migrate to new systems with the help of gateways. We are speaking to a number of players about this and we find the acceptance level quite high. There are some who are doing pilots of this technology, while others have gone beyond the pilot stage; they are ready to adopt it.

Which verticals are you targeting when pitching your solutions and services?

Acceptance is obviously high in banking, finance, IT and telecom. But we are also targeting the government and service areas such as hospitality, aviation etc.

What is the status on the Nortel acquisition?

That as you are aware is happening at the global level. We were selected as the stocking house bidders by Nortel. This allowed us to put the first bid which we did. But since Nortel is under bankruptcy protection, there other companies who have also put their bids for the business. We are not aware of who they are. But the winner will be announced on September 15.

Why did Avaya bid for Nortel?s enterprise business?

Because there are synergies that can be harnessed. There are areas where they are good. There are areas where we are good. But it?s a good fit overall.